IV447 - April 2012

The number of cases of resistance in China continues to grow. Protests both large and small are an extremely frequent occurrence in China. They range in scale and nature from workers’ protests against unpaid wages or demands for increasing labour rights, to protests against corrupt officials or environmental protests. While protests have often been brought to a swift end via repressive means, struggles have also frequently led to concessions being granted to the protestors, as the party-state will adopt different means by which to limit social unrest and restore “social harmony”.

We, the undersigned organizations, are deeply concerned about the continuous repression against social activists under lèse-majesté law in Thailand, including Somyot Pruksakasemsuk, a labour activist who has been imprisoned without bail since 30 April, 2011.

PDF of IV 447 April 2012

Camp Usman, Mindanao – It was a cloudy 1st of May in 2011 when members of the Revolutionary Workers Party – Mindanao commemorated the 10th anniversary since its founding on May 1st 2001. Despite the rocky and difficult terrain towards the camp, it was a festive revolutionary gathering with comrades greeting one another.

Alan Thornett from Socialist Resistance, the British section of the Fourth International reviews the growing strength of the Fourth International in Asia, starting from developments at the recent meeting of International Committee (IC) of the FI earlier this year.

On April 1 by-elections were held in Burma to fill 48 vacant seats in Parliament. The National League for Democracy (LND) led by the Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi won 43 out of the 44 seats that it contested. The result was greeted unanimously by the international press as a victory for democracy.

A crowd estimated at 250,000 people or more wound its way through Montréal April 22 in Quebec’s largest ever Earth Day march. They raised many demands: an end to tar sands and shale gas development, opposition to the Quebec government’s Plan Nord mining expansion, support for radical measures to protect ecosystems, and other causes. And many wore the red felt square symbolizing support to the province’s students fighting the Liberal government’s 75 percent increase in post-secondary education fees over the next five years. The Earth Day march was the largest mobilization to date in a mounting wave of citizen protest throughout the province.

Not a day goes by without the outbreak of new mobilisations and new struggles. Because the popular résistance has not wilted despite the repressive apparatus, despite the marginalisation and scorn shown not only by the counter-revolutionary state apparatus but also by all the parties hungry for power, ignoring the revolutionary process and forgetting the objectives to be realised by this revolution.

In May 2010 Die Linke in North Rhine-Westphalia crossed the threshold of 5% and, with 5.6% of the votes, entered into the Land parliament of the western German state with the biggest population of all the Länder. Now this parliament is dissolved, and there will be new elections on May 13, 2012.

Following the strong comeback of Vladimir Putin in the presidential election held on March 4, 2012, Ilya Boudraïtskis, member of the Socialist Movement of Russia (RSD) looks back at the movement of protest against the regime which developed in Russia in recent months, and analyses the reasons for the crushing success of Putin and the perspectives for the country and for the Left.